The OneAsia Tour tees off for its third season in Indonesia today amid continued criticism from the Asian Tour as the battle to be the continent’s golfing power shows no sign of abating.
Since OneAsia began with five tournaments in 2009, Asian Tour officials have accused the organization of stealing their events, bringing down their tour and being bankrolled by a sports management company.
OneAsia have promised to have US$1 million prize money for each of their events as they attempt to offer Asian players a platform to compete in their home region, rather than be forced to play on more lucrative tours overseas.
Led by Ben Sellenger, a lawyer who worked previously with the Australian PGA Tour, they feel that Asia’s financial power and growing love for golf will lead to them having a calendar of 25 events a year, each offering a minimum of US$2 million in prize money.
They strengthened their calendar to 10 events last year and have 13 confirmed for this year, although they hope to extend that to 17.
The Asian Tour, led by former Myanmar professional Kyi Hla Han, have also built a successful product of 25 events this year offering US$45 million in prize money as they promote themselves as a tour run by players for the players.
Much of their success has come from co-sanctioning events with the bigger, more prestigious European and USPGA Tours, with Han looking to offer his members the chance to play against the best players on those tours or a route on to them.
Co-sanctioning makes up much of the US$45 million windfall, with 10 of their stand-alone Asian Tour events offering a meager total prize money of just US$300,000 each, including their ongoing tournament in India this week, leaving Sellenger to suggest the two are competing in different markets.
“We are not in the business of running [US]$100,000, [US]$200,000, [US]$500,000 events. We were never ever the sort to do that,” Sellenger said. “What we wanted to do was to create a level that doesn’t exist. [US]$1 million, full field for 156 leading Asian golfers at the top level 25 times a year, that’s what we want to do and that doesn’t exist in Asia. When somebody asks us can two tours survive in the region, I say it has been doing it for years — it’s been the European Tour and the Asian Tour. Those tours have been coexisting and operating for the last 10 years in Asia. Every event less than a [US]$1million has been an Asian Tour event and every event over [US]$1 million has been European Tour and it has been happening.”
However, the Asian Tour, established in the mid-1990s, remains unhappy.
“It is a sports marketing initiative to try and grab the market place. It hasn’t really brought that much, if it wasn’t there, those tournaments would be on our [Tour] so its brought nothing new only confusion to the market place,” Han said
However, it is not just the tours that are vying for space, exposure and sponsorship in a crowded golfing continent full of blossoming talents and marketing dreams such as teenagers Ryo Ishikawa of Japan and Noh Seung-yul of South Korea.
Korea, Japan, Australasia, India and China also all have their own golf tours, events and money lists which they squeeze into a congested calendar.
Sellenger vehemently denies Han’s accusation that OneAsia are making huge losses on tournaments and being underwritten by sports marketing agency World Sports Group.
However, the spat did involve players when the Asian Tour fined and suspended five of its members who played in a OneAsia event last year.
Han believes that the incident could happen again, but he thinks that because it was only a small number of players it is not a major concern, although it does demonstrate the pressing need for the two tours to find a working partnership for the sake of golf in the continent.
“We would like to work more closely and put into effect some of those original objectives that we talked about six or seven years ago, about co-operation and consolidation across the region to the benefit of the members,” Sellenger said.
“We were never ever meant to be competitive with the Asia Tour. We don’t replicate what they do. Our position is we are not a competitor to the Asian Tour,” he said.
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